CityFibre Picks New Chairman to Steer its Expanded UK Fibre Optic Rollout

CityFibre has today selected a new Chairman, Peter Manning, to help steer their rollout of ultrafast (Gigabit capable) fibre optic broadband networks into several new “secondary cities” around the United Kingdom.

Mr Manning appears to have strong experience in the public sector and telecoms, having previously been Chairman of the Marston Group and CEO of Colt Telecom, which should stand him in good stead for CityFibre that has recently adapted its focus towards the delivery of public sector and business networks.

CityFibre has already built a 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) and 103km long fibre optic ring network in York (The York Core) and a similar 1Gbps capable residential/business focused FTTH/P platform in Bournemouth (England). But they’ve also been planning to expand even further.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

“The UK economy can be significantly boosted through the availability of true ultrafast broadband and 100% fibre networks are the only way to deliver this. With almost 30,000km of fibre in the ground, connecting more than 350 sites and data centres across the UK, we are the country’s largest independent provider of fibre to secondary cities.

Peter Manning is a significant addition to our board as he has strong experience in public sector and telecoms. He will greatly add to the move into the next phase of growth as we pick the next cities for our transformational gigabit infrastructure and bring on board further major service providers to allow them to finally compete offering millions of homes and thousands of businesses revolutionary gigabit speed internet access.”

Peter Manning, CityFibre’s New Chairman, added:

“The lack of high quality network infrastructure in the UK has, so far, left our towns and cities far behind their European counterparts and the lack of gigabit speed internet seriously affects their ability to compete. The adoption of fibre is at a tipping point and CityFibre is in pole position to take it forward. This is a great time to be in the fibre infrastructure industry and I look forward to working with CityFibre to refine the strategy and drive the roll out of truly transformational networks that will benefit the whole of the UK.”

CityFibre is currently being supported by a multi-million pound investment from Citigroup and they’ve long held an ambition to invest up to £500 million into the deployment of ultrafast fibre optic connectivity for local authorities, businesses and homes around the UK (here). But in recent years the focus on homes, perhaps due to their very limited success in Bournemouth, appears to have given way to a greater focus on the public sector and business.

Mr Manning has also previously held roles as the CEO of Concert Communications, which was a Joint Venture between BT and MCI based in Virginia (USA), and various senior positions with BT organisations in the UK, Europe and the USA including leading the expansion of BT into mainland Europe as COO of BT Europe (between 1994 and 1996).